


all i wanna do right now

by LiveLaughLovex



Series: safe place to land [1]
Category: The Rookie (TV 2018)
Genre: F/M, Post-Episode: s03e01 Consequences, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:54:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28544376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiveLaughLovex/pseuds/LiveLaughLovex
Summary: Tim was right to think meeting with Rosalind would keep Lucy up at night. Fortunately, he doesn't seem to have an issue with being kept upwithher./or, in the aftermath of that meeting with Rosalind, Lucy calls Tim and drags him out for midnight coffee. Only there's little actual dragging involved, as you can't exactly drag someone who's already ready and willing to go.
Relationships: Tim Bradford & Lucy Chen, Tim Bradford/Lucy Chen
Series: safe place to land [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2102634
Comments: 56
Kudos: 106





	all i wanna do right now

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Troye Sivan's "Talk Me Down." 
> 
> / 
> 
> I wrote this immediately after finishing the episode, and did next to no editing, so if it's a little rough, I apologize. I was just so inspired, I couldn't help myself. Anyway, I hope you enjoy! :)

As it turned out, Tim had been right to warn Lucy off having that face-to-face meeting with Rosalind.

She’d honestly believed she could handle it, in the moment. She’d wanted to help her friend clear his name, and Rosalind had helped them do that, even if it’d taken several minutes of the other woman’s special brand of psychological torture to get them the information they needed. If keeping Nolan out of prison meant having to listen to Rosalind describe, in excruciating detail, what Lucy had endured in that barrel, then that was a sacrifice Lucy was willing to make.

She’d thought she would be alright, what with Rosalind being in a cage and Tim standing beside her, as solid and sure as he’d always been, ready and willing to step in if he was needed. She was proven wrong almost immediately after arriving home that evening, though, as for the first time in well over a month, she couldn’t close her eyes without being immediately overwhelmed by memories of what had happened that day, in that barrel, when she’d come so close to death that life had literally had to be breathed back into her.

The third time she woke, soaked in cold sweat and gasping for breath, with tears trailing down her flushed cheeks and a tortured scream caught in her throat, she decided sleep was a futile pursuit, at that point. She kicked aside her comforter and sheets with an irritable groan, staring indignantly at the alarm clock on her bedside table. Rationally, she knew it was an inanimate object. The smallest little part of her, however, couldn’t help but wonder if that _11:39_ was glowing a bit brighter than it normally did, just to mock her.

In her defense, picking up the phone wasn’t the first thing she did. She tried some deep breathing, beforehand, and brewed herself a cup of hot tea, which she drank on the sofa, cradling the mug to  
her chest as she tried to focus on the show Nolan and Jackson had both recently mentioned to her. Eventually, though, she had to admit to herself that none of it was working. When the clock read _12:29,_ she finally folded, reaching for the phone she’d dropped onto the coffee table and quickly dialing a number that’d become all too familiar, over the past few months.

Tim answered on the first ring, almost as if he’d been lying awake, the same as her, just waiting for the call. “What is it, Boot?”

“You know anywhere that serves a decent cup of coffee at this hour?” she asked, hoping he’d hear all the things she couldn’t bring herself to say, at the moment.

He didn’t even hesitate. “I know a place. I can meet you there in half an hour.”

Even with all the thoughts racing through her mind at the moment, Lucy couldn’t help but tease him. “I thought you said that wasn’t in your job description.”

He huffed a laugh, but it still sounded far too concerned to be legitimately amused. “It isn’t in my job description as your C.O. You’re the one that said we’re friends, remember? Last I checked, this _is_ the sort of thing friends do.”

And just like that, Lucy found herself unable to object. “Send me the address, will you?”

“Already did,” he returned.

They ended the call several seconds later, and Lucy couldn’t help but wonder what it meant, the fact that merely hearing his _voice_ was enough to soothe the nerves that Rosalind Dyer had all too eagerly frayed during their meeting.

She didn’t think too hard on it, though. Some questions were better left for another day, after all.

-

Tim was already settled in a corner booth when Lucy arrived at the all-day diner he’d texted her the address to. There was a mug of fresh coffee in front of the empty seat across from him, filled nearly to the brim, and an untouched plate of fries at the center of the table. Tim was studying his menu as she slid into the booth opposite him, but he glanced away from it the second she was settled, folding it neatly and placing it in front of him, next to his own steaming mug.

“You find the place alright?” he asked conversationally, reaching out and snagging a fry.

She picked up her mug before responding, taking a shallow sip and smiling when she realized it was prepared just the way she liked. “I did,” she assured him, once she’d taken another swallow of coffee. “Thanks,” she couldn’t help but add, smiling in the face of his exasperation. “I know it’s what friends do, Tim, but I also know it’s really _late_ , and we’ve got a job that requires us to be up really _early_ , so I just… thank you,” she said again. 

He stared at her for a moment, as if simply studying her, and then nodded once, the movement almost imperceptible. “Yeah, well.” He cleared his throat. “I know what it’s like to be kept up by all the crap in your own damn head.”

Lucy hummed noncommittally. “And did you wake someone up at midnight to demand they have a cup of coffee with you?”

“You didn’t _demand_ anything,” he pointed out evenly. “I offered. And as for me… I made the choice to deal with it alone. It was a _stupid_ choice,” he added, pointedly. “I shouldn’t have tried to deal with it all by myself. _You_ shouldn’t try to deal with it all by yourself. You’ve got friends. West, Nolan…”

She couldn’t help but scoff at that. “Somehow, I think they’ve got better things to do right now than listen to me whine about my nightmares, Tim.”

“Well, you’ve got _me_ , too, and I _don’t_ have anything better to do,” he said definitively, gaze never once wavering from hers. “And even if I did, I really wouldn’t care about you interrupting it.”

“Even if the thing I’m interrupting is your _sleep_?” she asked dryly.

He shrugged carelessly. “Eight hours is a luxury, anyway. I’ve been letting myself get too soft. You would be doing me a favor, Boot, really.”

She smiled at that, just barely, and then inhaled deeply, chin falling to rest in her palm as she stared across the table at him. “She wasn’t playing mind games.”

“ _Rosalind_?” he asked incredulously. “Of course she was, Boot; that’s all she ever does.”

“Okay, so maybe she was playing mind games, but she wasn’t… she wasn’t lying.” Lucy drew in a steadying breath, then continued. “That song, the one she sang while we were at the prison? I sang it when I was in the barrel. We’ve torn apart her call logs, Tim. She didn’t have any direct contact with Caleb that day. If she knows about that song, it’s because she heard me singing it.”

He stared at her for several seconds, so unbelievably angry _for her_ that it made something tighten in her chest, and then, finally, he spoke. “I’m sorry, Luce,” he said, the nickname rolling off his tongue with ease, as if hew as using it for the thousandth time rather than the first. “I, uh…” He trailed off, clearing his throat. “I didn’t believe her. I underestimated how demented she is, and Caleb was, and I’m just… I’m sorry.”

“For what, trying to reassure me? You didn’t do anything wrong, Tim. I just…” Lucy inhaled deeply, shaking her head with an exasperated frown. “I keep trying to convince myself I’m over it, and every time I do, it feels like… something new happens, and it just proves to me, all over again, that I’m not. As much as I try to convince myself otherwise, Rosalind Dyer still has a hold on me, Tim. I am still – I am _terrified_ of her. It doesn’t matter what I do, I’m just… I’m _fine_ , and then I’m not. I know she’ll be in a cage for the rest of her natural life, and I know you’d never let anything happen to me…” She frowned when he flinched at that but decided not to remark on it. She was, after all, haunted by her share of ghosts; she couldn’t exactly blame him for being haunted by his own. “I’m scared of her,” she finished, defeated. “And I don’t know how not to be.”

“Well, you start by finishing that coffee,” he replied patiently, nodding to the rapidly cooling mug in front of her. “And eating these fries before they get ice-cold, and ordering something else extremely unhealthy for you off that menu, there.”

“And then what?” she asked doubtfully.

He shrugged. “Wash, rinse, repeat. Find things to distract yourself from thinking about her, every single day. The hope is that, you distract yourself from thinking about her for long enough, you’ll stop thinking about her at all.”

“You think that’ll work?”

“I think Rosalind’s as narcissistic as a person can get. You forget why you’re scared of her, then you eventually stop _being_ scared of her. She loses her hold over you. It’ll completely destroy her. You’ll have beaten her at her own game.”

She smirked. “That sounds like a really good plan.”

“I thought so.”

She considered him for a moment, then reached for a fry, wrinkling her nose when she bit into an ice-cold chunk of potato. “All this distracting myself, forgetting to be afraid… it’ll get easier, won’t it?”

“Every day you do it,” he reassured her, his smirk softening into something much more genuine. “I promise.”

Even after all she’d been through that day, Lucy found that, strangely enough, it wasn’t all that hard to believe him. She didn’t even have to try at it, and, not for the first time, she found herself thankful that Tim Bradford was in her life.

She didn’t know what she was thankful for, exactly, and found so reason to ponder it at that moment, in a booth across from him, smiling and laughing more easily than she had in months. After all, some questions truly were better left for another day. 


End file.
